


Unbelievers

by nelfes



Series: No Place for Promises [1]
Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: F/F, Other, everything else i actually tried to keep to game canon imagine that, i changed konan's name spelling because it was bothering me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 12:47:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12631383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nelfes/pseuds/nelfes
Summary: Maltran's mechanisms lead Alisha to flee Hyland at thirteen years old and enlist in Rolance's Blue Storm Knights. Two years later, as a spy in Prince Conan's mansion, she meets Rose of the Wind Riders and a new tale is born.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is best read as one entire work but I have split it up into three sections as that was the way I wrote it. Happy reading.

In the Age of Chaos two very different girls were born, both steeped in tragedy. It was not this that set them apart; no, the kingdoms of both Hyland and Rolance had both seen the signs – potatoes taken from the soil that even when washed remained jet black, unexplainable storms and weather that made once fertile regions uninhabitable, the disappearance of town after town all pointed to one thing –

  
The Seraphim had truly abandoned mankind.  


It was what these two very different girls did with this knowledge that led them to become the Shepherd and Squire of lore. And, no, it was not their kindness or gentleness either (though they possessed these too), but the remembered taste of blood and the stomach dropping sensation of betrayal they shared in experience. The tragedies they held on to made them strong and they swore to never again forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Now, we can’t believe it, such a cruel conclusion;_   
>  _We’re unbelievers, crawling up again and again_   
>  _The wind blows, and headed somewhere, our linked footprints go outward;_   
>  _May our journey, not yet over, be a safe one._
> 
>  
> 
> -Kenshi Yonezu, "Unbelievers".  
>   
> 


	2. Chapter 2

The younger girl was named Alisha – a name reserved for Hyland’s nobility for that is exactly what it meant. She might have loved the name and seen it as the gift her father meant it to be if her mother had lived long enough to even murmur the sound.

As things were, she saw it as a shackle. She was raised from birth in the Royal court and while this was not the ideal for any child, the other children there at least had the guarantee of a title and position. They had a place and a meaning.

Alisha, the daughter of a dead commoner whose only guardians once out of the nursery were her maids, desperately wanted this. She yearned to love Hyland as a princess should, even if said princess was functionally useless to the kingdom.

As beautiful a wish as that was it was nothing but a fantasy and her failure to fulfill it only reminded Alisha of all her other failures. Such thoughts might have led her to fall into despair if she had not so soon found Lady Maltran. She had read of her – the great Blue Valkyrie who had run through a hundred enemies at the last battle of Glaivend Basin. She was as devastating in politics as she was on the battlefield and Alisha admired her so much she would even go to her once-hated parties at the Countess’s across the street.

Maltran noticed her too. She would answer her questions and not chide her for the sheer multitude of them. When at ten years old Alisha asked to be trained as a knight, Maltran considered her request as one from an adult and eventually accepted.

It was as a knight Alisha found her place. Maltran made sure she was given no special treatment and her instructors trained her as hard as any other lowborn soldier. When the time came to choose her primary weapon she came to Maltran with a newly forged lance and her mistress smiled.

It was devastatingly beautiful. All of her smiles were. Even on the day three years later when Alisha found her talking to councilman Bartlow regarding an abduction at Glaivend Basin, an abduction yet to happen but that the council had planned for one Alisha Diphda.

“I should have known you would find out this way. You always did have a penchant for following me around after all. One of the only true skills you possess,” Maltran laughed. “Oh, but I have tried to prepare you for this moment, Alisha, and I would say it is about time for a test, wouldn’t you?”

Her voice then was as dazzling as ever and filled with the chill of ice but the feelings that rose inside Alisha were anything but. They quietly burned; they burned as she followed Bartlow to a room in the castle to await further orders, burned as she held her breath and willed the tears back down in her heart, burned as she reached for the insigniad knife she always kept on her person and used it to disarm the single guard posted at the door.

Lady Maltran (no, just Maltran now) had been right. Alisha Diphda had been a tool of Hyland since birth, but she had chosen to be a knight. And a knight she would remain.

Shedding Hyland’s armor before an enemy general in the middle of the night for the Rolance regiment at Glaivend basin was perhaps an even greater shame than Maltran’s betrayal for Alisha, but a necessary one.

General Gouldman of Rolance listened to her explanation despite the jeers of the other soldiers. He had turned her knife with the Diphdan coat of arms over in his hand thoughtfully before pocketing it himself. The obvious lust for power in his eyes was almost comforting compared to Maltran’s sweet-faced lies.

“From this night on you are no longer a princess of the Diphdan family, but merely Alisha, foot soldier of the Blue Storm Knights; now, rise.”

And Alisha did. Gouldman surely knew that the words of one low born princess would be nothing in the fight against Hyland, but a spy dependent on his mercy – that would do nicely.

Alisha would bide her time as a tool, for at least this time she had chosen her keeper and role. When Gouldman had given her the blue lapel of the Church’s Storm to wear over Rolance’s standard red uniform, however, she could not help but see the irony in once more wearing the color of her former home.

She could never really escape, and the familiar knife she received after her single promotion was a reminder of that. Where the insignia used to rest now lay a burnt indentation, signifying nothing except perhaps herself.

She kept it on her as a reminder. She would stand tall even with a carved out heart.

The hurt did not fade over the years, but it became her own molten center of sorts – a reminder of her purpose.

Regardless of Gouldman’s plans for her, she would be the one to bring down the Blue Valkyrie.

It was not a source of  dissonance in her mind – after all what better way to serve Rolance? But of course as a Blue Storm Knight the country was not her first concern.

As a member of the Church’s Storm she served not the Royal Family but the Pope and his Cardinals. While Hyland had a Parliament made up of officials from both institutions, the country of Rolance was still split between loyalty to the Crown and loyalty to the Church.

Regard for the Church had fallen drastically in the past twenty years, according to Gouldman. Pope Masedra had spoken less and less – cloistering himself away in Pendrago’s Shrine Church. In his absence, one Runette Forton had taken his place as the people’s voice – rising from a simple nun to the country’s newest and most renowned Cardinal.

(Alisha had seen her speak, once – and never forgot the experience. She remembered what it was like to yearn for a savior and this woman spoke words meant to entice, inspire, and captivate both young and old.)

Naturally, the King and his supporters were none to thrilled with Cardinal Forton. Prince Conan was especially outspoken in his disdain. Well, it was no surprise the most pampered of Rolance’s two princes held such misogynistic tendencies and it played well into Gouldman’s hand when he sent Alisha and few of the Storm’s other female knights into his service.

Just in the few months since she had been in Conan’s mansion, Alisha had noticed an increase in his erratic behavior. The servants murmured about his upcoming marriage with a tone of concern. Apparently, the King had decided to wed his second eldest son to a member of the famed mercenaries – the Windriders. Alisha had heard much about them and the regard the Crown held them in – gathering intel on such a group would not be a bad idea.

And yet, as the weeks wore on she saw less and less of the esteemed mercenary group in the mansion. Conan’s entire schedule in fact seemed to shift in time with his moods. Sometimes an entire day would go by wherein the prince refused to leave his room, and other times his meetings with various noblemen and knights would last from dawn to dusk.

Alisha reported to Gouldman when possible and did her job as the prince’s guard as well as was in her power. Still, she could not shake the familiar feeling of dread in the air that hung heavy and choking like smoke. She would wait out.

As it happened, she did not need to wait long. Just five days prior to the wedding (which some servants whispered would never happen while sweeping the great hall in preparation), she heard a commotion near the prince’s chamber. Alisha was familiar with the patrol paths by now and ducked around a dark corner, lance at the ready when she realized the person screaming was not the prince but his betrothed.

“What do you mean you’ll pardon me,” the woman, Rose as Alisha recalled, hissed - her eyes flashing. Alisha recognized the dress she was wearing as one Conan had demanded tailored in one of his more lucid moments. The shoes that went with it were highly impractical and when Conan grabbed Rose by her wrist she nearly fell over.

(Even crouched in the corner Alisha noticed how the mercenary expertly righted her position, one hand going to her back only to find frills where two daggers should be).

“What did you do to Rosch, to Euguille? **Where is Brad**?”

“Oh, those traitors,” Conan sneered. “They should be face down on the ground beneath my guard’s feet if the Imperial reinforcements haven’t yet taken them away. A just punishment for such lowborn scum who dared to try and take my elder brother's life.”

Conan let her wrist go and instead ran a hand down her face, cupping Rose’s chin so their eyes could meet once more.

“But I know you, my dear, were guileless in this plot. That’s plain to see.”

The grip that came down on Conan’s arm looked ready to crush bone. One part of Alisha registered this calmly as the other emotions in her flared to life in response.

The sound of her lance clattering to the ground interrupted any further developments. Conan’s stride as he turned on her was one she recognized – a calculated façade when inside he was struggling for control.

“Your Highness”, Alisha began, voice shaking with what she hoped he would register as fear. “The Windriders have managed to pass the front gates. The reinforcements have yet to come and I called for more but-“

Conan’s stride quickened as he swept past her, muttering something about the church and their women. He kicked her lance out of his way as he turned to her with a scowl. Alisha noticed Rose, balancing on one high heel, eying the weapon with interest,

“Useless, all of you! Stay out of my way and take her,” he gesticulated violently between Alisha and the mercenary. “And lock her in the guest’s chamber. Now!”

As soon as Conan turned his back on the two of them, Rose lunged for the lance. She was fast but obviously unused to the weapon as she wobbled to lift it. Alisha stood to intercept her with her boot coming down on the blade. Rose jumped back and made for another lunge but  Alisha held one hand up to placate her and with the other offered the girl the knife at her belt.

“What –“

“Everything I just said now was a lie to buy time. I have no idea if any of the Wind Riders are alive, at all. Take this and follow me if you intend to save them.”

The woman hesitated only for a moment before accepting the knife and using it to cut off the bottom of her dress. Alisha led the way as the mercenary kicked off her other shoe and followed.

“Take this servant passage,” Alisha gestured to a darkened stone staircase set into the wall at an angle. “It will take you through the kitchens and to the wash where there is an exit to the right of the main gate”

The woman peered down the stairs, body seeming to urge her onward but she paused to look at Alisha once more.

“I’m off then. But I want to know who you are and what you get out of this.””

Alisha closed her eyes for a moment. It was a question she hardly knew the answer to herself..

“My name is Alisha. I am helping you now, because, back then, I had no help.”

The words left her mouth and they tasted so different. They tasted like truth.

“Alisha. I’m Rose,” Rose of the Windriders said, turning away. “May the wind be ever at your back.”

And in a flash of silver and frills she was gone – as fast as her name suggested. Alisha listened for a moment at the stairs, and turned away.

Her chest still burned and she wondered, as she retrieved her lance, when, if ever, it would stop this time.


	3. Chapter 3

The elder girl was born as Rose to a peasant family in central Rolance. Based on the few scant memories of that time she still carried, it had been an idyllic if simple life. That all changed, however, the day her small village was razed to the ground by a group of bandits

It was then that she had met Brad of the Windriders. He had found her, shellshocked, beside the bodies of her parents and fought off the remaining bandits. She remembered the strong arch of his back and the way the lines on his face softened as he knelt down and offered her a knife.

She had told him her name and he had nodded as if he had already known. Later he would tell her that the only roses he knew of growing up were the blood flowers, Rosa Currassavica, that bloomed every season on the Westronbolt plateau where no other plant could bear fruit.      

At eight years old, Rose vowed to become that flower not just in name but in nature. She kept the knife Brad had given her although it was too large for her to wield. He had laughed when she had brought it with to her first combat lesson. “Not yet,” he chided. “We must start with the basics.”

Rose was not a natural at combat - no, but she was determined. She knew based on that first day of training with Brad and what he had told her that the most important thing she could do was not act, but watch. And so she concentrated on each of his movements until she could copy them exactly.

When hand to hand combat became an option the other Windriders began to train her too. When she inevitably fell face first in the dirt she would stand up and ask to be thrown again in the same manner – this time she would watch and see where she had failed. The elder members were obviously pleased with her precocious energy but this was not a game for Rose. She would become strong.

Her new family was as loving as her old one had been and her young mind clung to them. They passed through so many ruined villages just like Rose’s own that the scenery seemed to blur together – it was only on the training ground with Eugille or reading a book in the back of wagon with Rosch that she felt truly real.

At camp one night, she confessed her fears to Brad. Such thoughts were hard to put into words as she was just beginning to put the pieces together herself. But her lingering regret that she had done nothing as her parents protected her was a bitter taste in the back of her throat as was the fact their faces were becoming harder and harder to form as each new day went by.

She had asked if that made her a bad person.

Brad had shook his head vehemently and instructed her to listen closely.

“Bad people are those who take and take without any remorse. They trample things beneath their feet because they can, they burn villages because it makes them feel strong –

But you, Rose, are a survivor. All of us here have lost our homes and all of us here have had to learn to adapt. You are not wrong for doing so. Even if you cannot remember everything about your parents you still carry them with you, yeah? Carry them with pride.”

Rose had smiled, then – because that was one thing she remembered her parents saying, that she was at her best when she smiled. Day after day she practiced just as she did with her martial arts to become a brighter person so she could light up the lives that had saved hers.

They had nowhere to go back to, after all. Brad’s home and family had been taken by the earthquakes of Westronbolt. Rosch had fled his house and his father’s belt with only a few books to his name. Euguille had lost his wife to a sickness of the soul, but he had stayed with her until the end.

But the wind was at their back, and it propelled them ever forward towards their goal. Justice within sight, never unreachable ideals. With every town they saved and each gang they dispersed Rose knew they were making progress

Even the King of Rolance applauded them. Rose remembered the celebration of her eleventh birthday (the day she had been picked up by the Wind) as an especially joyous time. Brad had accepted another job from the King and their future seemed bright. That night they all drank to it.

As for what do in the future, the group was split in opinion. They kept the lands around Lastonbell and Pendrago safe with the King as their generous benefactor but word from Lohgrin told that danger and crime prevailed at the far ends of the kingdom.

As Rose grew in both skill and age she was given more responsibility, and amazingly, look to for guidance when Brad and the older members were away. She became known as his successor which was both an honor and a persistent source of inner conflict.

“You are indeed like my daughter,” Brad admitted and the smile that spread across Rose’s face in response was her brightest yet.

“Like all fathers, I wish you a peaceful life.”

And that was the crux of it. Forget unreachable ideals, get justice within sight – his voice sounded in her head when Rose discussed plans to forward medicine through Aifread’s Hunting Grounds.

It was impossible to help everyone. But to help these people who had given her everything, Rose would do anything.

So in her fifteenth year when Brad had come to her, eyes bright and voice eager with a proposal from the King – she had accepted without hesitation. If she became a princess then surely she would finally have the power she so yearned for.

Prince Conan had seemed amenable as well. They both knew this was a marriage of convenience, but he listened intently regarding her plans for a potion supply line. She thought, perhaps, she had found an ally in her future husband.

But their planned visits became increasingly sporadic. He sent her letters, apologizing – citing family matters and arguments with his elder brother as most pressing. They would go months without hearing anything and when in the next letter, there was more detail regarding his latest tributes than plans for the wedding, the Wind Riders began to fear the worst.

Finally, however, an invitation came to them all in the chill of the darker months. The wedding was to be a small affair held at his mansion with a few representatives from the church and nobility there to act as witnesses. All the Windriders were invited and the plan was for the wedded couple to travel to the palace in Pendrago the following day.

The excitement in everyone’s faces and words kept her warm that night.

All of the Windriders were staying at the inn in Lastonbell when the final package came. Rose ran off with it, laughing, and shut herself in her room. The white lace that greeted her was so bright, so foreign – she ran her hand over it and for a moment felt that old sense of vertigo.

(When she came out of her room with a spin and a “Ta Dah” Eugille actually teared up. He had never thought he’d be at a wedding again, much less one held for one of his children.)

This time she would be the one to ground them all. She would make real Brad’s dream real just as they had all made her real.

They settled into their rooms in the mansion a week prior to the wedding as arranged. Rose’s room was the farthest from the others, in the guest rooms closest to Conan’s own chamber – but that was, of course, natural. Wasn’t it?

(She had thought the dread at the pit of her stomach had only been pre-wedding jitters.)

The screaming began moments after she had gotten dressed the morning of the wedding rehearsal. When she rushed into the hallway, it was filled with knights – two of them dragging the Wind Riders’ newest recruits, Talfryn and Felice, away. Rose ran after them but was intercepted by Conan and his own personal guards.

“Conan! What is going on?”

The prince smirked and Rose’s blood ran cold at the sight of it. Her hands twitched with need for her daggers. If she could just make it back to the room –

Conan seemed to read her mind as he commanded one guard to hold her while the other searched her room. She heard the sound of her window being opened and the sharp clink of metal on the courtyard grounds. She looked around, desperately searching for a solution to a problem she had yet to grasp.

“I will take her from here. Continue with the plan,” Conan instructed his guards and turned to Rose who had been roughly pushed to the ground. She stood, the sharp back of her shoes digging into her heel, as she lunged at Conan.

“Out with it, Conan! Where are they taking Talfryn and Felice?”

“You are in no condition to be making demands,” the prince said softly, almost gently as he put both of his hands on her shoulders. “But… I may be willing you pardon you for this, at least, so long as you agree to be mine.”

Rose pushed him away with a cry of rage. The problem was growing larger by the second and Rose’s resources were scant to none but she refused to beg.

“What do you mean you’ll pardon me,” Rose hissed, attempting to settle into an offensive stance. She lost her balance when her one shoe skid on the tiled floor and Conan took the chance to grab at her once more. She was thrown against his chest, but undeterred took a fistful of his shirt and pulled herself up.

His face was identical those bandits on that day so long ago and she screamed in equal terror and fury.

“What did you do to Rosch, to Euguille? **Where is Brad**?”

Traitors, he said and everything clicked into place. How had she not seen it in his letters, his practiced apologies, the damn floor plans – this whole thing had been a setup!

When Conan finally let her go, Rose was prepared to tear him apart with her own bare hands. He winced at her grip and she used his momentary hesitation to kick off her left shoe and prepare a sweep. As he fell she could turn it into a throw and -

A loud clank from just behind them caused Rose and Conan both to turn around, however. Standing in the corner of the hall was a knight, her face pale. There was something odd about her uniform but Rose’s attention turned to the knight’s fallen lance as Conan pushed her aside to hear his grunt’s report.

She did register the news of the Windriders breaking past the gate, however, and hope flared in her breast once more. As soon as Conan was down the stairwell Rose slid to the ground and grabbed hold of the lance’s shaft. It proved difficult to lift, however, and the knight was upon her before she could wield it fully. Rose fell back, certain she could take this woman if the weapon still lay on the ground between them.

The plans and schemata forming now as to how to overpower the knight ground to a halt at the woman’s next action. She pulled from her belt an odd, beaten up knife and held it out to her like a peace offering.

Her next words made everything so simple.

“Everything I just said now was a lie to buy time. I have no idea if any of the Windriders are alive, at all. Take this and follow me if you intend to save them.”

If there was no guarantee they were alive then Rose would just have to find out herself. She had no time to wonder why this knight was helping her. Right now, her only concern was her family.

She took the knife – felt its comforting weight in her hand and stripped the lower lining of her dress to bits. The knight was already moving ahead and with the absence of her trail of frills and those terrible shoes, Rose had no problems keeping up.

The staircase where they stopped appeared to be built into the stone foundation of the house. Rose might have missed it in her hurry to find an exit, but the knight assured her it led out near the mansion’s main gate.

Her feet moved before she was even cognizant of it, but as much as she felt the need to run – there was one more thing she need to ask.

“Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

The knight paused as if she was unsure how to answer, but when her voice came out it was strong and her answer final.

“Alisha,” Rose said as she turned away. “I am Rose. May the wind be ever at your back.”

It was all she could give her and in another moment she was running down the stairs at full speed, Alisha’s knife had her side. She ran her hand over the odd indentation in the middle of it as she paused at a kitchen window.

It was time to fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins.
> 
> I have changed it so that Conan's descent into his hellionized form is a slower struggle. As will be seen it is only in his final confrontation with the Wind Riders and Dezel that he fully succumbs to the transformation. All other information like the plot to kill his elder brother has been parsed from the game's nigh incomprehensible flashback scene.
> 
> Next time:  
>  _you'd better run, you'd better run_


End file.
